Isn't it time to open your arms to Christ's grace?

It is so easy for me to lose awe for You, because I so often hold my reverence in the sieve of my sinful nature and I quickly wonder where my worship has all gone to.

It is simple–instinctual, even–for me to think something or say something or do something that tries to sabotage Your glory. I am always one second away from betraying You to the world. I am always one second away from detonating my ability to witness for You.

So many times, so many times, You have reached down in Your grace, and You have given me another chance. So many times, so many times, You have forgiven my irreverence; You have poured Your grace over my mockery.

But I don’t want it to be that way anymore.

I don’t want to live running from one moment of asking for forgiveness to another. I don’t want to live running back and forth between the Kingdom of God and the abyss of Satan.

I don’t want to keep falling.

All sin, all my sin, begins its journey in my irreverence for You. All sin, all my sin, begins its tear through my life and scarring on my soul because I lost honor for You. If I don’t lose honor for You, I don’t sin. It’s that simple. It’s that choice.

What have You ever wanted from me, Lord, but that I would love You?

And what have I ever had more trouble giving?

Jesus, in Your unfathomable love, You gave love. You came down, and You gave love. And because You gave love to creatures who don’t have love, who threw Your love away the first time You gave it, when You endowed it to us, when it was truly natural to our nature . . . You gave us the example of how we are to love You. You became human, and one reason was to show us how humans were meant to love God.

God became human so He could show humans how to love God. It’s incredible. I would just have annihilated the species and started over. But not You.

I revere You.

Your love is so much greater, so much deeper, so much wider than any I can possibly imagine if I use every electron in my brain to try to imagine it.

Your love to the Father was nothing but miraculous in the eyes of sinners and angels alike. You loved God (and You were God!) no less when God’s plan was for You to die upon a cross than when You were ruling in Heaven before time began. It’s more than my tiny, fallen mind can imagine. You wanted us to love You so much that You were willing to come and show us how.

You asking us to love You is not like a movie star wanting autographs or a politician wanting votes. You want us to love You because it is the only way to have Life. You are the only Life. Those who love You live. Those who do not love You perish forever.

You know the only way to Life is You. Satan knows it, too. And since it is impossible for him to separate You from life or to ever receive it from himself . . . he strikes out at anyone he can possibly keep from it . . . convincing angels to become demons . . . convincing children of God to become groveling slaves of torment and darkness.

And he strikes out at us through the very tactic that banished Adam and Eve from living in the Garden of Eden forever: irreverence.

Irreverence is like taking a crowbar to love, ripping it off its bolts, and then wondering whatever could have destroyed it.

Irreverence is taking so lightly, Lord.

And yet it is the tool of Hell.

So I pray this night for reverence. I pray that I would clothe myself in humility, looking to Your walk on earth to know how. I pray that from my hands and mouth and mind would come actions and words and thoughts seeped in honor for the Savior who held Himself to the cross for me, who held together the mockers, who held the nails in his wrist, who held together even the men who were crucifying Him.

If You would do that for me, Lord, how could I, how could I ever for even a second yield to dishonoring You for any reason?

Please, Jesus, let it never be again.

In Your Name,

Amen.

The snake was more clever than all the wild animals the LORD God had made. He asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must never eat the fruit of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1, GW)

“‘AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.'” (Jesus, quoted in Mark 12:30, NASB)God loved the world this way: He gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life. (Jesus, quoted in John 3:16, GW)